This thesis re-evaluates the emergence of the neoconservative critique of American post-war liberalism from 1945 to 1980. Its original contribution to the scholarship on neoconservatism lies in the claim that a particular understanding of Jewishness fundamentally shaped the neoconservatives' right turn, as well as neoconservative ideology. Few scholars have recognised the primacy of Jewish identity politics in the evolutionary history of neoconservatism. Those who have, have done so inadequately and unmethodically. Therefore, my thesis systematically analyses the Jewish dimension of early neoconservatism by placing particular focus on its two principal mouthpieces, Commentary and The Public Interest, while drawing on autobiographical writings, personal papers and oral interviews. Reconsidering neoconservatism from this angle also contributes to a reevaluation of modern Jewish political history by debunking the myth that the American Jewish community is governed by consensus based on political identification with liberalism. My thesis shows that neoconservatism not only contributed to the rise of conservatism and the fall of liberalism on a national level, but also played an important role in post-1945 Jewish intra-communal contentions about which political affiliation best expresses modern Jewish American identity. Accordingly, it demonstrates that Jewish political culture is more diverse than is usually appreciated and that neoconservatives draw on a tradition of Jewish conservatism, which has so far received little attention from scholars of modern Jewish history.

The thesis sets forth a model relating political contention to technological development. The selective realisation of a technical potentiality is shown to have been determined by conflict and negotiation among shifting alliances of state and private-industrial entities, each attempting to impose its requirements upon an emergent technology and thereby to dictate the precise form and pace of technical development. The 'course of communications satellite development is examined during the technology's formative period from 1961 to 1975--as the product of struggles over technological control. Negotiation centered upon control, and contending modes of technical development were promoted and opposed on the basis of their perceived consequences upon the distribution of effective control over the technology. The initial mode of satellite development lasted from 1961 to 1971 and is characterised as pre-emptive underdevelopment; urgency and haste were combined with tight constraints on the qualitative breadth allowed to technological articulation. Pre-emptive underdevelopment derived from an uneasy political accommodation struck among constituencies dominant during this phases the U.S. government, American communications carrier industry and a Western European intergovernmental bloc. The reigning compromise was directed toward expediting satellite development sufficiently to forestall rival deployments without endangering existing and anticipated interests in both satellite and competitive technologies. Technical development beneath a minimum level risked undermining the regime of control by leaving open the possibility of rival satellite systems; but development beyond a maximum level would have harmed the outstanding industrial and political interests in whose defence control was sought, while subverting the control regime by widening the legitimate scope for multinational participation in authority over the technology. Pre-emptive underdevelopment, it is argued, was succeeded largely by the products of its own success in meeting the policy requirements of initially dominant entities and in thus reducing the continued importance of satellite technology as a political arena and instrumentality. Restraints upon development could therefore, in the post-1971 period, be relaxed, while the growing demand for a wider array of satellite services encouraged emergence of a more intensive mode of technological development under the auspices of a de-cartelised, quasi-federal and multinational political regime.

This thesis measures the rhetoric and effect of political campaign discourse. It is a rhetorical analysis of three campaign speeches given by Senator Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election, "A More Perfect Union" delivered in March 2008, "The American Promise" delivered at the Democratic National Convention in August 2008 and "A World that Stands as One" delivered in Berlin in July 2008. Reading the speech teleologically by drawing on Kenneth Burke's theory of rhetorical identification and consubstantiality, this thesis argues the Obama Model of persuasion constructs audience identity and uses specific strands of an audience's history to emphasise common ground, shared values and shared interests in provisional coalitions against common challenges. This is accomplished through the strategic use of "we," through the praise of an audience's dominant symbols and values and through scapegoating, Othering and antithesis. As a multidisciplinary study, this thesis seeks to understand how these messages and strategies are received by audiences using focus groups and audience response technology. It convenes twelve focus groups of previously unaddressed audiences in the United Kingdom to understand the doxological equipment audiences bring to the rhetorical transaction of American political campaign discourse. As such, it seeks to understand moments of convergence and divergence, identification and division between demographically diverse audiences and Obama's campaign speeches. This thesis is an original contribution to rhetorical theory, identity and identification, studies on Kenneth Burke and Barack Obama, cultural studies and Joseph Nye's theory of soft power in international relations.

Neoconservatism reached its zenith as a school of thought when it became associated with the Iraq War. Although the war was largely considered a failure, it raised the profile of neoconservatism as a school of thought. Many studies were completed which pointed to the influence of prominent members of the George W. Bush administration who were considered to be ideologically neoconservative. When Obama won the presidency in 2008, it was assumed that the influence of neoconservatives, or neoconservatism more broadly, would be over. However, given neoconservatism’s historical foundations and the tenacity of its adherents it seemed important to consider whether this has been the case. Therefore, this thesis set out to answer the question: To what extent have neoconservatives, and neoconservatism more broadly, influenced foreign policy debates during the Obama administration? I argue that neoconservatism has remained not only salient within foreign policy debates, but prominent in these debates, during Obama’s two terms in office. An examination of US foreign policy towards the nuclear crisis in Iran and the Syrian civil war indicates that neoconservatism had a substantive influence on the policy debates and the options considered within them, particularly in Congress. In some instances, neoconservative policy entrepreneurs contributed to legislation. Furthermore, this thesis finds that neoconservatism has been the predominant approach to foreign policy within the Republican Party on the issues of Iran and Syria during the period under review.

President Obama’s tenure in the White House had a significant effect on political comic deliberation and performance within stand-up comedy, particularly in reference to discussions of race and racial politics. This thesis examines the subversive and conservative qualities of political stand-up comedy under his presidency, exploring how the cultural form reacted and responded to the ideological, performative, cultural and political tones and pressures of this era. These chapters range from an analysis of Obama’s own presidential stand-up addresses, to African American, left-wing and right-wing political comic reaction within stand-up comedy, and finishes with an examination of Donald Trump’s effect on political stand-up (and the broader areas of political comic production) in the final year of the Obama era. The thesis’ nine case studies explore narratives and issues of Obama-era power and various political, social and cultural items of the period. The primary methodology consists of textual and discourse analyses of the nine case studies. These are reinforced using a broad data collection of relevant journalistic, political, theoretical, comic, and cultural analysis. The main findings of this thesis are that political stand-up comedy was largely a timid cultural agent in the Obama era due to a range of ideological, racial, cultural and socio-political qualities. Subversive elements can, however, still be found throughout the nine case studies, particularly in the area of right-wing political stand-up comedy, a subversion which is magnified by the field’s deficit in cultural and social insurance in comparison to African American and left-wing political comic ruminations.

During their efforts to reformulate and redefine U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy throughout the 1970s, the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, engaged extensively, on a bilateral basis, with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran’s (AEOI) Director, Dr. Akbar Etemad, in order to pursue an agreement establishing a cooperative relationship in the nuclear energy field. Although the United States attached high strategic importance to maintaining a strong bilateral relationship with Iran, and despite Iranian protestations of discriminatory treatment, the U.S. pursued an increasingly firm position in its negotiations with Iran, by insisting on the inclusion of progressively more restrictive elements to prevent proliferation, in the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement between the two parties. Although the imposition of stricter conditions frustrated Iran, the US bilateral negotiating position was consistent with its evolving wider nuclear non-proliferation policy. Precisely because of the strong ties and alliance between Iran and the United States at this time, the U.S. --particularly the Carter administration -- wanted to showcase the eventual U.S.-Iranian cooperation agreement as a model for future bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements. The U.S. administrations also aimed to exploit their close relationship with the Shah by using him as an intermediary to advance U.S. proliferation concerns in the region. U.S. foreign policy is complex and multifaceted. As identified by Rosenau and further explored by Wittkopf et al, there are external, societal, governmental, role, and individual sources, contributing to foreign policy. Adapting this approach to a specific aspect of U.S. foreign policy -- that of nuclear non-proliferation policy -- this thesis identifies and examines the various sources contributing to U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy during the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. The analysis is refined further by examining the specific bilateral policy case study in the context of the general U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy during this period. This comparative approach allows the thesis to identify the objectives of U.S. bilateral nuclear cooperation policy with Iran in a systematic manner and conclude that the bilateral objectives were consistent with general U.S. nuclear non-proliferation objectives, which evolved throughout the three presidencies. This thesis contributes to the literature on U.S.-Iran bilateral foreign policy on nuclear issues in the 1970s and U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy more broadly. The originality of its contribution resides particularly in its is extensive empirical research using authoritative primary sources, specifically declassified official U.S. government documents sourced from the U.S. National Security Archive, and the relevant presidential libraries. These archival sources are supplemented and supported by existing secondary sources as well as semi-structured interviews of U.S. and Iranian officials.

Institutional factors affecting implementation of policies are a reflection of the larger political context and setting of money in education. This has an impact on implementing accommodations for English Language Learners in standardized testing under No Child Left Behind. To see if this is true, four states: Indiana, New York, Tennessee and Wisconsin were chosen as examples of state policy adoption and their test contracts were collected from a test company. State accommodations for ELL in testing policy and state costs for standardized tests were analyzed in a comparative review. The diversity of methods in accommodation and lack of correlation between state standardized test costs to product illustrates institutional factors affecting NCLB implementation. Therefore it becomes essential for professional development to support states in implementing NCLB within an institutional context. Addressing these factors will lead to greater educational progress in U.S. federal policies.

In this work the structural transitions of the rare earth oxides praseodymia and ceria grown on Si(111) are investigated. It is demonstrated that several of the rare earth intermediate phases can be stabilizied by post deposition annealing in ultra high vacuum. However, in most cases no single phased but coexisting species are observed. In addition, the surface structure and morphology of hex-Pr2O3(0001) as well as reduced ceria films are investigated.

The study of mass public opinion and political behaviour has developed a substantial corpus of theoretical claims and empirical results linking political, attitudinal and demographic variables to different policy attitudes. Still, the research literature has, to date, paid scant attention to how space – that is, proximity and distance to salient geographic features – influences policy attitudes. Research in political behaviour has long proceeded as though policy attitudes among mass publics ‚come from nowhere.‛ The unifying argument of the four articles comprising this thesis is that mass public opinion does indeed come from somewhere: spatial dynamics matter for policy attitudes in a variety of domains. The articles develop the argument that spatial proximity to geographic features act as an indirect measure of intergroup contact, localized knowledge, issue awareness, and issue salience. The articles deal with three substantive topics: the Canada–United States relationship, attitudes toward energy transportation infrastructure, and attitudes toward immigration policy. Specifically, the thesis draws on survey data to investigate: (1) the mutual perceptions of the Canadian and American publics, (2) Canadian attitudes toward North American integration, (3) attitudes toward the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States, and (4) American attitudes toward illegal immigration. The major finding in each article is an interactive relationship between proximity and political attitudes: depending on the political context, proximity serves to either amplify or mute the effects of political party identification or ideology on policy attitudes. An innovative aspect of this research is the integration of spatial data through geocoding (appending latitude–longitude coordinates to) respondent-level data and calculating distances to relevant geographic features (e.g., the Canada–United States border, oil pipelines and the United States–Mexico border).

The role of Notch in cell fate determination and lineage restriction in the bone marrow (BM) is controversial in the field. Recent studies have convincingly shown that Notch is dispensable for haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) regulation in adult haematopoiesis (Maillard et al., 2008). In contrast, Notch signaling has been proposed to be of importance in the regulation of BM megakaryocyte progenitor differentiation, based on dominant negative genetic approaches, identifying a potentially distinct role for Notch in adult BM haematopoiesis (Mercher et al., 2008). Here, I found that by selectively ablating the gene coding the transcription factor recombination signal-binding protein J kappa (RBP-Jk), to which all canonical Notch signaling converges, canonical Notch signaling does not mediate HSC maintenance, neither in steady state nor in conditions of stress. Furthermore, I propose, in contrast with previous studies (Mercher et al., 2008), that canonical Notch signaling plays no role in myeloerythropoiesis cell lineage commitment in the BM. My data also show that key Notch target genes are suppressed by RBP-Jk, as their expression is unaffected in Notch1-deficient BM progenitors, while target genes are upregulated in Rbp-Jk-deleted megakaryocyte and erythroid progenitors. This establishes for the first time in mammalian cells in vivo, that Notch target genes are kept in a suppressed state by RBP-Jk, potentially restricting T cell commitment to the thymus and not to the BM, at the expense of myeloerythropoiesis. Notch signaling and GATA3 are two master regulators in T cell commitment (Han et al., 2002; Ho et al., 2009; Pui et al., 1999; Radtke et al., 1999; Zhu et al., 2004). However, although very well established as being involved in the thymic stages of T cell restriction, there is little evidence of Notch and GATA3 being involved in the migration of a thymus settling progenitor (TSP) from the BM to the thymus or in the establishment of the earliest thymic progenitor (ETP) in the thymus. From this thesis work, I conclude that Notch signaling is essential for the emergence of ETPs in the thymus in a NOTCH1-independent manner. Moreover, I demonstrate, as supported by a very recent published study (Hosoya et al., 2009), that GATA3 is important for the development of the earliest T cell progenitor. GATA1 and GATA2 mediate haematopoietic stem cell maintenance in the BM. GATA1 is required for erythropoiesis, megakaryocytes and eosinophils while GATA2 is important for the proliferation and survival of HSCs. In contrast, a role for GATA3 in the BM has never been established. By using a Gata3-conditional knockout mouse model, I demonstrate that GATA3 is dispensable for HSC maintenance in steady state and following active haematopoietic regeneration as well as for HSC self-renewal in the BM.